Mr. H. G. Wells took the idea of describing an imagined tomorrow and made of it a stimulating romance. In saying that he took the idea one does not mean to imply that he borrowed the scheme of "Looking Backward" or of any other book. The notion of criticizing today from the height of a postulated tomorrow was probably born and raised before Bellamy. My bibliography is imperfect, but I seem to remember that an Assyrian conceived the notion and inscribed his reflections on a ton of brick. The important thing is the kind of future a man imagines and the way he gets there and the justice of his backlook on the world as it is. Wells's "The World Set Free" is the most vision-expanding book of its kind--if there be a kind--that I have ever quarrelled with and been delighted by. It justifies the last word of its title. It does not cramp the growth of the race between a set of rules. It spreads the lines of development out at a generously wide angle. It bids humanity spring from what it is. It makes no desperately impossible demands upon our common nature. Indeed, with a cunning hidden plea, not evident at first glance, Mr. Wells draws the world council, which gathered together the shattered nations and gave them the first good government they had ever known, as a collection of ordinary men, with only one or two inspiring geniuses. The idea--a very important idea--is that any of us duffers could do it if we had to, and if we were only jolted out of a few little private interests and superstitions.